Back from the Dead

BACK FROM THE DEAD: COVID19 RECOVERY STORY

by BERNIE DUBINSKY

I’ve always thought of myself lucky, but not until I caught the COVID-19 virus did I realize how lucky. 

As a 70 year old overweight guy who biked a lot but still had all the other risk factors, I thought if I got this virus, I was a goner. The news of 2020 Pandemic hit me as the start of a collapse of life as I knew it and I’d assumed part of that deal was, if I caught the virus, I’d be dead. Made sense.  The virus targeted my generation and was gunning from me, kinda like the Arnold nut job character in the Terminator.  Every time I looked over my shoulder, there it was, always about to catch up and when it did; I felt for sure that would be, ‘all she wrote’. 

Didn’t work out quite that simply.   Right after 2021 started I took sick – not all the symptoms, but enough that my heart sank.   Testing took forever but a positive result came back Jan 6^th – just in time to watch the Capital get over-run.  I felt like I was being over-run by an invader as well. Couldn’t sleep……started drifting in and out of consciousness…no appetite, constipation, non-stop nausea.  Now this was weird, like LSD, Peyote and Mary Jane all wrapped up into one bad trip. Trouble is, I wanted to hold off taking this trip, I wanted off this airplane. 

Like it or not, it was on.  Nights filled with bad radio voices, endless channel flipping on unwatchable cable TV and bad movie ideas from Netflix as I sat in my place zoned out.  Until I noticed something.   I could hear shouts and cries, e mails from over my cell phone. All messages from folks in the cooperative I live in. Like vague chants, me neighbors kept nudging me.  

They were rooting for me to stay alive.  The Terminator caught me, but these guys in my housing cooperative  figured I could beat it.  Imagine that?    These much younger voices drowned out all the other bad news and self-doubt and old movies.  Maybe I was just being a drama queen and this is not the “Sickness onto Death”?  

Turns out, those voices were right. I started by me getting hungry again.  That’s what happened first.  In the middle of the night, I grabbed a week old rotisserie chicken in the fridge that was given me by a neighbor, threw it in dirty baking dish and warmed it up.  In the dark, at 3 am, I wolfed that chicken down, like a caveman, and ate half of it – not even putting salt on it, just slicing it with a Swiss Army penknife.  .

First real food I had eaten in 10 days.  Protein craving was my body’s screaming out for energy for the fight.  My body kept telling me; “you’re gonna fucking die, you moron, if you don’t help me with this virus – forget your imagined death, I’m struggling here to stay alive.”  And that’s what I did. I forget my doom and gloom stuff and started listening to this my beat-up old body. 

Been symptom free now for 6 days and as the 45^th prez just left my old hometown, DC: other clouds have started to lift.  I’m sleeping again, eating and yes, even going to the bathroom like normal.  No more split consciousness; clarity of thinking has returned. I’m recovering nicely, according to my HMO.  One more negative test result and I'm good to go.  Imagine that?    I’m still alive. 

Looks to be pretty clear for now.  Feels great! New movie playing in the mental VCR, its Charles Dickens Christmas Carol and I’m Scrooge, back from the dead on Christmas morning.  But that could all change with yet another health reversal.  Just hope it’s not like Arnold always says: “ I’ll be back.”